Whoops!

Over the last couple of years the world seems to have gradually divorced itself from rationality, order and even reality.

Is it pompous to suggest that much of human development results from a clash of ‘preserving what we cherish’ (conservatism with a small ‘C’) and by lobbying, protesting – even just challenging existing shibboleths wherever they be found – ‘making progress’ in terms of what is considering good, fair, equal, tolerant and liberal (again with a small ‘L’)?

However. Society always lies upon a bedrock of common human beliefs, understandings and assumptions.

That, if you fall over and break a leg in the street, people will rush to your aid, call an ambulance … and then an ambulance will come and take you to a hospital (here in the UK, probably an NHS one) where a team of doctors and nurses will make you better again.

That bad guys lose and good guys always eventually win.

That Southern Rail trains will run on time and enable you to commute to work in London with some degree of ease and comfort.

That our wonderful police service will keep us safe from crime and terrorism.

That our politicians – or at least those that eventually gain power and responsibility – will somehow act sensibly and rationally and carefully in the best interests of our nation and its people.

That the world will keep going round, whatever madness happens from time to time.

[You know the sort of thing …].

But hang on. Supposing those fond assumptions and beliefs suddenly disintegrate? (After all, they are only assumptions and beliefs …)

Supposing that when you fall over in the street, nobody stops to help and no ambulance ever arrives?

Or if you’re mugged outside a newsagents, no policeman ever turns up to take charge and sort things out?

Or if say the statesman of the world have long decided that a two-state solution is the best possible and best practical route to solving the Israeli-Palestinian geo-political crisis … and then a newly-elected ‘off the wall’ US President (and not one created by a fiction writer or TV satirist) comes along and, off-the-cuff in a White House press conference, states something quite different?

Or if a former – and much discredited – British Prime Minister emerges from the woodwork to spend £9 million setting up a ‘centrist’ political think-tank body and begins calling for the losing side in a Referendum to have the issue re-run because ‘People are allowed to change their minds’?

Being a political class cynic, since Donald Trump ascended to the Presidency of the United States of America I’ve been doing my level best not to join the bleeding-heart liberals in crowing “I told you so!” at the spectacle of Trump floundering around and making a fool of himself and his country. Especially since even the most committed of anti-Trumpers could not have imagined he’d be doing it quite so spectacularly and so soon after his inauguration.

However, I fear that on this topic my personal proverbial dam may be about to break.

Right now it seems that the world has collectively lost its marbles. Anything and everything we all hold dear – or thought we did – is now quite capable of being challenged and possibly turned upside down.

You can lie in your bed dreaming up the weirdest improbable theories and geo-political situations as you sink into night-time unconsciousness … and yet wake up the next morning to find that even those absurdities seem conventional and staid compared to the actualité.

Unsettling times, these seem to be – if you want to look at it that way.

But then again, I suppose you could say “But what did you expect?”

I’m reaching the point where nothing surprises me anymore – indeed, it’s got to the stage where I’m finding it unusual and slightly boring to wake up of a day and discover that nothing outrageous and crazy has happened whilst I was away.

Fasten your seat-belts …